William Dietrich - Ice Reich

The pilot opened his mouth, then thought better of it.

Drexler took a deep breath. "All right. Good. Now. It's true that when we came to this island the first time, my initial interest was solely in the disease. A tool for German defense, I thought, or at least for research. But then my men got sick and died and it seemed over, at least until we could return."

"So why not leave it be?" she asked.

"I'm coming to that. Will you please listen?" He looked at her with frustration. "We reported what we'd found, of course, but Reich strategists pointed out such a disease was too dangerous for us to use unless our own troops were immune. And then the war began, our victories were stunning, Antarctica was far away, and the matter receded from my mind. But as the Reich's fortunes darkened my thoughts returned to this island. I remembered Greta's excitement after your exploration of this cave and wondered if I'd been too hasty. And then you appeared, Hart! A personal disaster, yes. But also a revelation. An inspiration! Because I realized that in our personal problems was a key to success. Not to destroy, but to end the destruction. To force an armistice to this war."

"Jurgen, the war's ending soon anyway," Hart objected. "Maybe by Christmas."

"That's where you're wrong. That's what you don't understand. Even as we speak Germany is launching a great new offensive in the West that will take the Allies totally by surprise. And this is only the beginning of what our Fuhrer promises. This remarkable new submarine that saved your life is merely one of hundreds being built that will soon reverse the tide of the naval war. The Reich has developed a new kind of airplane with a revolutionary jet engine. And Germany is building rockets capable of reaching America. The war is not nearly finished, Hart. It could go on for years. Years and years. Unless we act. Unless we succeed."

And you wouldn't disclose all these secrets unless I'm about to be sacrificed, the pilot thought gloomily.

"And so the idea that came to me is to use this microbe not as an instrument of mass murder but of mass salvation. To put an end to this war once and for all. To bring the world to its senses. Because with your antibiotic, Greta, suddenly we're not threatening death. We're offering life."

"What?"

"Look. Even if we could unleash this plague and perfectly protect our own people, Germany's peril would not be over. The other side would still seek to retaliate. There are rumors the Americans are working on a superweapon of their own: some new kind of bomb. German scientists think such a bomb is years away, but who knows? What if we escalated the war and the United States replied in turn? Killing begets killing. That's been the lesson of this century. But what if we offered life? What if we offered the Allies the opportunity to cure a terrible plague, in return for agreeing to an armistice? What if we could achieve a cease-fire on our terms? Yes, peace! By an emergency effort of German doctors and nurses to end a pestilence in Washington or London or Moscow."

The couple looked confused. "But, Jurgen," Greta objected, "how would such a plague get started?"

"By rocket," he answered matter-of-factly. "Or plane or submarine or even truck. We'd have to deliver the spores. The swiftest would be a V-2 air burst at night. Whole cities could be held hostage to the germ, the clock ticking. But no one would have to die if the Allies agreed quickly enough to German help in return for peace. And then the war could end."

"You'd infect a whole city?"

"Yes. And then save it. To end the war, you see. To balance terror with mercy, and thus bring peace. In the final accounting we'll be heroes." He looked at them expectantly.

"But women? Children?" Greta objected. "People will flee, the problems with distributing an antibiotic- "

"Those are details. It will work. It will work! If we make it work. And it begins here, in this cave. So you see, I'm not a monster, Greta. I'm a man of vision. The one man who can clearly see how to end this war on German terms."

She looked at him with dismay.

Hart spoke up. "Well, I quit."

Drexler sighed. "Hart, you can't quit- until I say so." The threat was clear.

"Jurgen," Greta said despairingly, "just let the war end by itself- "

"No! I refuse to be a victim of events when I have the opportunity to direct them. What we have here is a dazzling opportunity, far more dazzling than what we hoped for when we first came to Antarctica. This is what I've been waiting to tell you. This is what I've been waiting to share with you. Will you help?"

Greta studied her husband for a long time. Then, slowly, sadly, she nodded. "I'll do what I have to do, Jurgen."

"Are the charges ready?" Schmidt asked mildly, hunching in the cold wind of the dry valley. His voice was muffled behind the visor of his gas mask.

"Yes, Doctor. It should be quite a show." The SS man was splicing the wires to the detonator.

Schmidt looked sourly at the smoking volcano above them, the vista blurred by the scratched eyepieces of his mask. The plume of ash had made him nervous the whole time they were collecting spores at the upper end of the frozen lake and he wanted to get back to the submarine before the damned woman did: she might become irrational if she knew he was collecting more than a few spores to test the antidote- if she realized they'd come to stockpile the disease as well as the cure. That was not the only reason for his impatience: he hated the outdoors and couldn't wait to get back to the controlled environment of the U-boat. He also hated the clammy rubber of the mask but knew it was all that was keeping him alive until Greta returned with the antidote. The mummified bodies they'd passed in the valley had been warning enough. He dared not breathe a spore.

It was obvious the bacteria were carried to the surface in hot springs, spores drying on the surface and then carried by wind across the island. It might be impossible to permanently shut off the source but it seemed feasible to hide it at least until the end of the war, lest the Allies come here. The Reich had enough spores now to begin mass propagation in laboratories. At the rapid rate of bacterial growth there'd be plenty of plague within weeks. Their flowering would coincide with the readying of the rockets.

Schmidt thought Drexler's elaborate scheme to hold Allied capitals hostage to peace was absurd. Too complicated. Better to kill as many of the enemy as possible while waiting for additional German superweapons to reach the field. War was about killing, not psychology. But Drexler was most energetic when allowed his naive dreams, so the doctor let him prattle. And the question was moot until both disease and cure were in hand. Schmidt was content to leave the final strategy to others: as a man of science he preferred the purity of research.

He longed for a cigarette and wished he could tear off the mask to light one. Well. At least the first step was done. Time to start back home.

"Detonation," he ordered calmly. The soldier twisted the crank.

A boom thundered on the glacier that hung over the end of the valley and a geyser of snow and dirty till erupted into the air, cracks racing away on the ice. Then another and another and another, on and on, some explosions quite high on the frozen snout. Their crack was counterpointed by a deeper rumble of avalanche. A slurry of snow, chunks of ice, and glacial rock debris started down, pushing a billowing white cloud before it.

"Splendid!" The mask made Schmidt look like a gigantic insect. Behind it his eyes glowed as he watched the mantle of the mountain slide down. The SS squad faced away as a shock wave of air hit and staggered them, a momentary blizzard of snow and dust blowing by. Then the avalanche clattered to a stop and it was quiet again, the hot springs covered with a rubble of rocks, dirt, and chunks of ice. Wisps of steam curled upward.